At least Parker’s onto it

The news out of Europe, China and Australia is looking worse by the day. Bernard Hickey spelt out the consequences for New Zealand this morning:

A concerted slowdown in the global economy and the inability of China to restart its strong economic growth would bear down on both economic growth and inflation in New Zealand. That would mean lower interest rates for longer and slower economic growth for longer, along with higher unemployment, particularly if the Australian economy slows further and is unable to soak up surplus labour from New Zealand.

At least David Parker has identified the problem – the National government’s aversion to growth policies. He said today:

More instability in global markets is laying bare weakness in the New Zealand economy. That instability makes it more urgent to modernise the New Zealand economy to grow exports, jobs and wages, he says. “Poor economic news in the US, Europe and China, a drop in the Australian share market and instability in Greece are all contributing to unsettled markets. “But they are not the cause of New Zealand’s slow economy.

“The more unstable the global economy becomes, the more urgent it becomes to modernise the New Zealand economy with more exports encouraged by pro-growth tax reform, deeper savings and more innovation, “It is also imperative that the Canterbury rebuild is not further delayed, as this is an important part of economic activity in the next few years.”

Parker also laid out the options and consequences in a pre-Budget speech calling for change in the old orthodoxies. He’s absolutely right – time for change is well overdue. What’s coming at us doesn’t look pretty. I was about to do a post saying I hoped someone in Labour was doing some scenario planning and was very pleased to see that someone in politics has their eyes open.

If there is global weakness then there is an underlying problem with focussing on export markets.

I’m not sure that he gets the idea that to compete for bulk export markets means lower wages and greater environmental degradation to keep costs down and that is completely at odds with ‘growing’ wages.

We can’t continue to use up resources and grow markets to export to in ever greater volumes. I’d like to hear some talk about a strong domestic market as well, although I guess that would mean people are paid enough to afford the products they’re making.

If you think about the mantra that says that unless NZ exports lots then we won’t be able to pay for anything is proven absolute bullshit by the fact that the entire globe prospers and pays for everything without exporting. Just as it could and has done in the past in NZ. Just as the entire USA economy has done for considerable periods in its past. The domestic economy is the driver. All any economy is, is everyone getting up each morning and going about their daily biz – nothing more and nothing less. It is about paying for the shelter you live in, the food you eat, the milk on the weetbix, the petrol you use to go to work, the sandwich you buy for lunch, the car you pay for, etc etc etc. It is solely about people and activity. The more activity, the more economic activity. It is all just domestic domestic domestic. Nothing else.

I’m not an economist but, from your description, it sounds as if ‘exporting’ is just a way to have more economic activity within a national economy than the national market can support – i.e., excess production.

At the global level it must be zero sum unless the global population keeps growing.

Or is it more complicated than that?

Edit: Or, unless ‘demand’/consumption keeps growing – not just population

+1
Either they (centrist politicians like parker) don’t really understand what’s going on or they are just saying things which are politically palatable to the mainstream. Either way I don’t want them calling the shots.

The economic goal should be self-sustainability before worrying about exporting.
The gross thing about NZ is that so many people are working hard just to pay for the basics when the resources for everyone to live comfortably are so abundant.

As a single market becomes saturated very quickly, especially with the massive productivity gain we’ve seen over the last few decades, export markets allow those excess products to be off loaded and thus maintain profits for the owners and to pay the interest that the banks demand for printing the money. Of course, as those export markets start to produce their own products and don’t need ours then we go back into poverty as the excess products we have no longer sell.

We produce far more than we need but we got the free-market disease and don’t produce everything that we need. If we did produce everything that we needed (with a limited export/import trade for those things we couldn’t produce) then those productivity gains that we’ve been having would have us down to working about 2 hour per week each, there would be no poverty, we’d be borderline sustainable at worst and we’d probably be better off as well mostly due to improved social conditions.

Of course, poverty is needed so that the rich and powerful can force everybody else to work harder so as to keep the rich and powerful rich and powerful. They can throw the fear of poverty at the workers to keep them working (this is the reason why the NACTs want to break unions and the welfare state).

The local population is too small to maintain an internal infrastructure at anything similar to our current economy and society.

At an extreme end if there were no imports (ie without the cuban style embargo breaking) to sustain the infrastructure, I’d expect that we’d rapidly drop to a late 19th century economy over a two or three decades as the gear wore out. That would be accompanied with similar drops in public services and health.

I started work at the peak of the local industrialation, and even then it was quite apparent that many of the bits of industrial gear that we depended apron to build our products for the local market (I was working at Ceramco) simply couldn’t be built here. And that was a reasonably low tech set of industries.

That is why there is and always has been an extreme focus on exports in the nz economy. Even in the best case we need them to get the gear that we simply do not have the local resources, plant or expertise to build ourselves to bootstrap the local infrastructure.

The real problem is our extreme focus on extractive exports like dairy where we can’t sustain current levels of production because of soil and water resource depletion, and where there is a ever present risk of disease deciminating the whole industry. The second issue is some of the crap that we waste our overseas funds on.

The local population is too small to maintain an internal infrastructure at anything similar to our current economy and society.

At an extreme end if there were no imports (ie without the cuban style embargo breaking) to sustain the infrastructure, I’d expect that we’d rapidly drop to a late 19th century economy over a two or three decades as the gear wore out. That would be accompanied with similar drops in public services and health.

You’re still thinking in the terms of the failed economic systems of the past. The dead weight loss of profit would have to be removed but we have the people and skills to maintain and develop the infrastructure that would allows us to maintain a similar economy to what we have now. Although we would be looking at a decrease in production of goods we’d still be able to maintain a similar living standard. All we’d really be looking at is a better distribution of the resources we have.

I started work at the peak of the local industrialation, and even then it was quite apparent that many of the bits of industrial gear that we depended apron to build our products for the local market (I was working at Ceramco) simply couldn’t be built here.

Even in the best case we need them to get the gear that we simply do not have the local resources, plant or expertise to build ourselves to bootstrap the local infrastructure.

The US didn’t have the infrastructure that Britain had, Britain even tried to prevent them from having that infrastructure but they built it anyway. Britain is an even better example: She started out without even the knowledge that the US had from Britain.

If we stop concentrating on over-production for export then we can redistribute the freed up people and resources to build stuff for NZ.

If it can be built then we can damn well build it. We may start a few years behind what other countries are capable of but we can certainly do it.

Of my surviving uncles and aunties that lived through the Great Depression, this definitely feels different to them. There are no shadows of wars great or otherwise decimating the workforce, no great Influenza epidemic striking whole percentages of the population.

But they know this is our Great Recession. Thinking it would take a decade to work through European and US domestic private debt was just wishful.

I have been reading a coffee-table illustrated review of Roosevelt’s New Deal – and all the great works and organizations that were formed in response to crisis. I remember when Muldoon reacted to the oil crisis in the late 1970s, which was nowhere near as long as this, even if more acute.

It’s time to get the outlier models out. Time for a programme and a politics larger then either the Greens or Labour have thought of to date. But what is it? And with such a weak state, is it still possible?

What? This isn’t anything at all. Why do we have both National and Labour trying to out-growth each other. Policies such as this will just drive more activists towards the Greens, who seem to at least get it, even if they don’t necessarily have solutions.

I agree with my green friends that the debate should not be about reigniting growth but about having a soft landing and working out how to feed everyone adequately, how to make sure everyone is looked after and how to keep civilization going in the meantime.

The future need not be so scary. We will have fewer flat screen tvs, drive less and spend less time overseas. But we will have more time to spend with family, to socialize, and to educate ourselves.

We just need to learn how to make the transition. We need to forget exports and work out how to survive with dignity relying on local resources.

Traditional concepts of economic growth will be as relevant as V8 holdens in years to come.

But must that mean that the levels of public service shrink at the same time? We know that most of the income tax take already comes from the wealthy, even after the tax cuts that the wealthy got in 2009.

Taxes pay for public services. Meaning, the kind of health system, education, Police, justice, and broadly social welfare that we have. We may well become a nation of virtuous peasants and be happier for it, but we still seem to want the same class sizes, health system etc derived (mostly) from tax income.

If the economy really is going to decline for a very long time, then so will the state, surely, and all that the state provides. Any suggestions?

Their money comes from somewhere. Even if you don’t agree with the more extreme perspective that capitalist wealth are the proceeds of theft, surely you’d agree that the ability to gain and keep wealth is due in no small part to the existence of rule of law, infrastructure, education, and administration of the government.

Surely it’s fair that those who benefit most from that economy pay for their privilege?

I think mr micky that you are falling into a familiar trap in linking technological advancement with economic growth.

I agree that economic growth, as it is currently defined and powered, will alter significantly, but I don’t see the link to any slowdown in technology or products. The two are somewhat different, although linked in many ways. For example, an early model flat-screen tv (are they vintage yet?) may have cost say 100 measures of raw material and energy to produce whereas a new one in the future may cost 2 measures of raw material and energy. Technological advancement does not need heaps of material and energy to advance. And also, of course, the need for low material and energy things will drive the technology in its very direction.

It’s a bit of a mix-up and I don’t think the scenario will play out quite as simply as you portray.

And since when have any V8s had relevance, except as pure entertainment and cultural exchange? That is their entire raison d’etre. A bit like the ballet.

I agree that technological advances are vital. My simplistic nirvana prediction does not anticipate they will happen. It is a hippy inspired desire for a simple lifestyle that is probably vital but may not be if the right technological advances are made.

But I really hope they happen.

I mentioned V8s as a symptom of the problem. That some humans want to own a gas guzzling loud ostentatious pile of metal when a smaller more efficient one would be cheaper and more sustainable persuades me that some people will never get the idea of environmental preservation.

Well, some of us adore great ballet and I am sorry that it should be blighted in this context. If only life were a beautiful rhythmic art like ballet. May the Art, if necessary, extend beyond all arguments on exports, imports, economy, technology. The sublime, of course, is indescribable.

dancer and dr terry I think you have taken the wrong implication from V8s and ballet. I guess most ballet lovers wont like V8s and v-v, however there was no intention to malign either V8s or ballet. They both have wonderful balance, power, finesse and can turn heads, as well being cultural beacons. In addition, both attract the fairer sex.

For example, an early model flat-screen tv (are they vintage yet?) may have cost say 100 measures of raw material and energy to produce whereas a new one in the future may cost 2 measures of raw material and energy.

With all due respect, and I know you are a smart dude VTO, but this is fucking lunatic growth blinded madness.

But let’s say you are right.

An early model flat screen TV cost $40,000 in money and a full 100 measures of raw material and energy. Throughout the whole of NZ, there were say no more than 1000 people who would buy a unit at that price.

A total of 100,000 measures of raw material and energy are used up to produce those 1000 units.

NOW

the latest model even bigger flat screen TV costs just $1,000 in money and only 2 measures of raw material and energy (frankly I think the 2 figure is bunk, way too optimistic but lets go with it).

But now 500,000 people in NZ buy one, since $1000 is a steal. Especially on no interest credit and a 20% off Boxing Day sale.

So now 1,000,000 measures of raw material and energy get used up. That’s TEN times more resources used, even though each TV unit is produced way more efficiently!

GET IT???

The more advanced, efficient and cheap we can do this shit, the faster we end up burning through our remaining limited resources.

ATM, we use money as the limiting tool but money is infinitely printed by the banks removing the limits that it’s supposed to produce. And we’re told by the politicians and economists that removing these limits is a Good Thing (everyone becoming richer). All of which means that we need to set better limits, ones that people can see and understand that they’re hard limits. We can live well within those hard limits but infinite growth and everyone becoming a multi-millionaire isn’t on the cards.

No, it’s not, it’s supposed to be though. It’s the limits that it sets that causes the distribution of the scarce resources that we have. The idea of growth that the economists and politicians push is the idea that we can over come those limits. Growth, in the minds of the economists and politicians, takes us out of the zero sum game that those scarce resources force us into and takes us into non-zero-sum game nirvana. They just haven’t clicked that it has never worked and never will do.

No, I’m not. Once I got to the definition of money in the present paradigm as An abstract representation of perceived value it became obvious that money was a tool used to accommodate the distribution of the limited resources that we have and not a very good one as people started concentrating on the money rather than the resources and then invented ways to infinitely inflate the amount of money in circulation.

Well you have a point CV but I guess my own point could have been shown with a better example.

My point was that economic growth can be separated from technological advancement, but I did qualify it by saying that the two are heavily linked and mixed up, which is what you seem to have focused on.

Sure, more tvs would be produced at 2 measures which in the end would have a greater effect on the growth problem, but the point is that things will be produced with next to nix. Economic growth will fail due to so many more cheap tvs but the techonology will continue – recall mickysavage’s original point that we will all live in flower gardens again and we wont even have a printing machine.

FFS there is a very good reason why there is no replacement for the space shuttle. There is no fusion reactor. There is no cure for cancer. The furthest space craft from the Earth were launched in the 1970’s and nothing out there is even planned to come anywhere close.

Technological advancement is sliding up against a fucking wall. Shit slowed down big time from the late 1980’s on.

FFS there is a very good reason why there is no replacement for the space shuttle.

Yep, we privatised everything
It’s also a dumb idea for LEO insertion. Reusable is good, but the entire flying thing is only good for earth-earth travel. Earth-space or space-earth is best with rockets and capsules.

Oh, and that space programmes are expensive bling-bling for nations. Particuarly those involving putting folk up there.

But with peak debt, peak energy, we won’t be able to MAINTAIN IT in the near future, let alone maintain progress.

Slowed down != stopped.

Sure, getting more pixels on an iPad screen is progress. Big fucking help that’s going to be when the transisters wear out and you start getting dead pixels. Of course, by then you can just consume a brand new iPad version 8.

Nope. I can see computers in NZ’s future made using electricity from geothermal/hydro/wind/solar. We have the resources here to make them and we’re well set to get electricity generation from renewable sources.

So we might not all be driving H2 hummers that run on super. The point is that moving from one energy source to another might not be the cataclysm you’re predicting. Bad for a while, yes, but not the end of civilisation.

Climate change – both AGW and ocean acidification – are more serious problems than phasing out oil as a fuel source.

Why are you two talking about cars? They’ll be gone as we just won’t be able to afford them. We could only afford them with cheap oil and that will be gone for NZ sometime before the end of this decade.

Stabilizing an unstable system ,that has moved far from equilibrium,is both difficult and has unpredictable consequences if the system is open,which it is.

One of the rectifying valves in the NZ system is the open exchange rate,which has reduced the falls in commodity prices which is seen globally.

The exchanges rate however is subject to predation such as arbitrage from the “cash and carry ” trade who can borrow at a lower rate overnight in europe nd invest at a higher rate in NZ.

This would be alleviated by lower interest rates ,which again fuel bubbles mostly in the AK market.Hence the RBNZ is limited in its response unless it specifies equity rates,or alternatively Govt policy broadens the tax market into either CGT a property tax or an asset tax.

There are still substantive opportunities for NZ exporters in a low exchange rate regime,low internal inflation rate environment.

These opportunities are often in more labour intensive areas such as timber production on the east coast where the forest resources are coming to production.

The debt manufacturing by banks is more a result of imaginary growth ie balance sheet revaluations of tangible assets by property and asset owners.

A simplistic example is a high st property owner who increases the value of the asset by revaluation,and expects a reward by an increased rent,if the unrealized capital growth brought a constraint, read property growth tax the balance sheet revaluations and property price increases would reduce proportionally.

I notice that both Key and even Christine Fletcher (Auckland Councillor) are wearing out the “we don’t want to be like Greece” scare tactic. Sadly it’s working but NZ and Greece are more than just geographically half a world apart.

Politicians who do this (and it’s most parties, except maybe the greens (only maybe)) do my head in because it’s deliberate dishonesty to scare people into agreement.

Yep, exactly. I watched Key intensely closely last night when I saw him pull out that line “we dont want to end up like Greece because that is where we are going” for a flicker of of a twitch, but he held it calm. He had the line prepared so the facial rigisity was already pre-programmed.

Key is a dishonest wanker.

Want to not be like Greece? Take the banking function out of private ownership and then the interest payments disappear, in a relative sense because the interest would effectively be paid from ourselves to ourselves instead of shareholders in privately owned banks.

The entire financial system has been designed to transfer wealth into the hands of the few. It does that very well. Taking that power out of the hands of the private banksters is essential but no party, so far, is willing to even suggest such a thing.

What gets me when I read posts like the one above and the reactions to it is the total naivete that pervades it.

In Greece towns have to <a href="What gets me when I read posts like the one above and the reactions to it is the total naivete that pervades it.

In Greece towns have to feed prisoners on a volunteer basis otherwise they starve. Their military on their bases are running out of food. Their power grid is on the verge of collapsing, they don’t have medicines any more and yesterday Spain announced it needs a bail out for their banks and Italy is one the way.

That means that in two months their prisoners are going to be starving and their power grids will be on the way out.

Here is a nice chart which shows how much money is needed and how much is available. No money, no food, no power grid.

No power grid means no water, no food (as in no fridges) and there is on average perhaps one to two days of food in the supermarkets but according to the baltic dry index global trade is taking another huge hit indicating that the unsustainable system of trying to feed a population with food grown halfway across the planet is collapsing.

All major countries reinstated their border controls some time ago in order to prevent large population movements.

People in need of water and food do not think of flatscreen TV’s and that is an understatement.

People in need of water die within three days and those in need of food turn to cannibalism in a week.

We are not talking about a depression here. Take Holland for example (recently downgraded too).
Holland’s population is 17 million people. The country produces nothing as all their factories have been moved to China (which by the way is collapsing too). In order to feed the population the country needs a bout 70 times more arable land than it currently has. It imports everything it needs from South America, Africa and other countries with a surplus of land and produce.

As our current financial system collapses under the weight of the Derivatives bubble the money flow created as debt will dry up (See Greece as example) and people will start to die. It is that simple.

There will be no soft landing. There will be starvation, social mayhem as the global population plunges back to what the globe can actually sustain and a rude awakening that perhaps flat screen TV’s and the latest video game are not as important as the TV ads made them out to be.

Unless… unless every Nation takes back its own money printing system and starts investing in their populations own infrastructures to revive economies locally. But with agenda 21 waiting in the wings that is not going to happen. Our leaders don’t want that. They want us dead. To them we are Cockroaches and useless eaters. > on a volunteer basis otherwise they starve. Their military on their bases are running out of food. Their power grid is on the verge of collapsing, they don’t have medicines any more and yesterday Spain announced it needs a bail out for their banks and Italy is one the way.

That means that in two months their prisoners are going to be starving and their power grids will be on the way out.

Here is a nice chart which shows how much money is needed and how much is available. No money, no food, no power grid.

No power grid means no water, no food (as in no fridges) and there is on average perhaps one to two days of food in the supermarkets but according to the baltic dry index global trade is taking another huge hit indicating that the unsustainable system of trying to feed a population with food grown halfway across the planet is collapsing.

All major countries reinstated their border controls some time ago in order to prevent large population movements.

People in need of water and food do not think of flatscreen TV’s and that is an understatement.

People in need of water die within three days and those in need of food turn to cannibalism in a week.

We are not talking about a depression here. Take Holland for example (recently downgraded too).
Holland’s population is 17 million people. The country produces nothing as all their factories have been moved to China (which by the way is collapsing too). In order to feed the population the country needs a bout 70 times more arable land than it currently has. It imports everything it needs from South America, Africa and other countries with a surplus of land and produce.

As our current financial system collapses under the weight of the Derivatives bubble the money flow created as debt will dry up (See Greece as example) and people will start to die. It is that simple.

There will be no soft landing. There will be starvation, social mayhem as the global population plunges back to what the globe can actually sustain and a rude awakening that perhaps flat screen TV’s and the latest video game are not as important as the TV ads made them out to be.

Unless… unless every Nation takes back its own money printing system and starts investing in their populations own infrastructures to revive economies locally. But with agenda 21 waiting in the wings that is not going to happen. Our leaders don’t want that. They want us dead. To them we are Cockroaches and useless eaters.

I once wondered on this site what success would look like for some of the more extreme commentators on this site. And instantly regretted it, because they then told me. Commentators inevitably ended up with a spectacularly strong state – like Cuba but without the charisma oratory, or Rhumba.

The kind of crisis that would precipitate revolution into an extreme form of government beyond the three main parties here is never predictable in its outome, is usually full of massacres, and is usually expecting some organisational entity to emerge from this carnage that is a state, has no money worries or debt, redistributes everything, no-one gets rich, and there is otherwise something resembling Thomas Moore’s Utopia. Which I loved.

If one were anarchistically inclined, one could say that as soon as there is a system, there is failure. I’m not one of those.

Labour supporters such as myself tend to have a limited ideological elasticity. Perhaps too sensitive to what other people think, too petrified of losing again.

No-one wants to will crisis, let alone any more of New Zealand’s sustained decline.

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Chris Lewis quickly backed down from the suggestion of a dairy moratorium in the Waikato, but environmentalists won’t let it go so easily. The Waikato Federated Farmers president now insists he merely raised the notion as a “straw man” at… ...

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